Arie Luyendyk Jr.’s season of ABC’s The Bachelor came to a close on Monday, March 5 in what has been described as “the most dramatic finale ever.” Yes, host Chris Harrison uses that teasing catchphrase every year, but in Monday’s three-hour episode, it rang true (spoilers ahead): Arie proposed to and then broke up with Becca Kufrin in order to be with runner-up Lauren Burnham.
In true Bachelor style, every last ounce of this drama went down on camera, leaving viewers outraged over the way Becca’s heart was broken for all to see on national television. But, in the wake of the explosive finale, there’s a lingering truth audience members might not want to face: Arie may have broken up with Becca, but we the viewers are just as responsible for Becca’s heartbreak.
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The social media reaction to Arie’s ultimate decision was swift, visceral, and full of collective fury. “Arie is every terrible dude who does something terrible and then wants to be told that ‘it’s OK,'” one viewer tweeted. Another weighed in to say that she would have “slapped” Arie during the finale. He was described by viewers as “psycho,” “trash,” and a “douchebag.” Arie, for his part, seems to have stayed away from social media during the season finale, as he has not yet responded to any of the backlash.
But fans seem to be even more angry with the franchise as a whole, calling out ABC for “tricking” Becca into thinking she was embarking on a couples’ weekend in Los Angeles when she was really about to be ambushed and broken up with on camera. One fan took to Twitter to write, “I can’t believe this whole thing was filmed. Becca is a human being who deserves the privacy to cry and scream! ABC and The Bachelor should be ashamed.” Another viewer added, “I’m not even mad that Arie changed his mind. Whatever. I’m PISSED that someone told Becca she was going to a ‘happy couple getaway’ but actually was going there to be publicly dumped and humiliated. Fuck off ABC.”
The overall consensus from viewers is that what Arie did was shitty, but what ABC did was worse. Many fans are furious that the network exploited Becca’s emotions in order to achieve its “most dramatic finale ever,” and that’s understandable. It’s hard to watch someone have their heart broken on live television, especially if you’ve been dumped before and know how it feels. It’s even harder to know that they definitely didn’t see it coming, while others behind the camera were completely in the loop.
But here’s where things get a little murky. The Bachelor franchise isn’t exactly known for being mindful of its contestants’ well-being, to put it mildly. Just a few months ago, Bachelor in Paradise received criticism from observers who thought the show was exploiting sexual assault allegations for suspense and, ultimately, ratings. Prior to that, Rachel Lindsay’s season of The Bachelorettefeatured a hometown date story arc that leveraged a contestant’s uncomfortable family dynamic to create conflict.
What’s more, almost every season of The Bachelor is chopped up, edited, and spit out in a way that paints one or two of the female contestants as “villains,” offering them up as social media bait for a barrage of cyber-bullying, slut-shaming, and all-around harassment. In at least one instance, this kind of public treatment led a former contestant to feel “suicidal.” When you take all of this into consideration, the way that Becca was treated during the finale isn’t surprising at all. In fact, it’s expected.
From left to right, Becca, Arie, and Lauren.
ABC
There are many reasons why people tune into The Bachelor every Monday, and, to be fair, different viewers have different motivations. Some people use the show to bond with friends, hosting “fantasy league” groups. Others watch ironically to laugh at the show’s pretenses. And, sure, there are people who are genuinely invested and entertain the idea that people can fall in love by simultaneously dating over a dozen people on national television. But arguably one of the biggest Bachelor trends is viewers’ tendency to live-tweet the show, no matter why we’re watching, sharing our every reaction and observation over the course of an episode. This gives us a unique way to interact with the series and feel like we’re a part of it ourselves, and the truth is that we are.
It’s no wonder, then, that the franchise feels a need to constantly “one-up” itself. Viewers are expecting drama, and drama, in turn, feeds engagement. If The Bachelor was stripped of all its emotional meltdowns, it would be a pretty boring show. We don’t just want to watch strangers find happiness: We want to watch them fight, spill secrets, scheme against one another, and yes, even get their hearts broken.
If The Bachelor was stripped of all its emotional meltdowns, it
would be a pretty boring show.
Drama is why captivating contestants including Corinne Olympios, Ashley Iaconetti, and Clare Crawley continue to pop up in Bachelor spin-offs: We’re itching to consume more confrontations, more breakdowns, and more on-camera fighting. And when we react to all of this on social media, we feed The Bachelor machine, allowing it to grow, evolve, and shape-shift into a creature hell-bent on producing emotional havoc. If it weren’t for us — our tweets, our responses, our commitment to watch every Monday — there would be no “Bachelor Nation” at all.
That’s why it’s difficult for us to appoint ourselves the arbiters of when ABC goes too far in manipulating its contestants. The network is delivering exactly what we have made clear we want, and that’s why we the viewers share responsibility for Becca’s humiliation on national TV. It’s not unlikely that it was never Arie’s idea to propose to and then break up with Becca but rather the plan of the producers searching for a “dramatic” and “never-before-seen” conclusion. Ultimately, all of these decisions we’ve been so mad about online were made because of us.
Ultimately, all of these decisions we’ve been so mad about online were
made because of us.
That said, it’s easy to get angry at Arie here: He’s the one on camera doing the heartbreaking. But it’s also worth taking a moment to consider that Bachelor contestants are experiencing normal, human emotions in abnormal, bizarre circumstances. Most of us have never dated over a dozen people at once, traveled to restaurants in helicopters, and found ourselves considering a proposal at the end of just a few weeks. It’s honestly a recipe for knee-jerk decisions (and it’s unsurprising that the majority of couples from the franchise don’t work out).
And while it’s also completely understandable to have an opinion about what we see on Monday nights, it’s also worth keeping in mind that every tweet, every reaction, and every moment of outrage continues to play a role in a vicious cycle. We are the ones keeping The Bachelor alive; we are the ones feeding the drama, causing it to build and increase at the expense of the contestants themselves. We, too, broke Becca’s heart. And for that, we can’t just be furious at ABC, or Arie, or Chris Harrison; we also — and mostly — have ourselves to blame.
If we aren’t ready to admit that The Bachelor is a machine of our own making, we’re not being honest with ourselves. Our performative outrage at ABC is peaking right now, but the network is doing exactly what it’s always done. If we’re truly uncomfortable with that as viewers, only one option makes any difference: logging off and tuning out. Until we do, we’re complicit in the very real emotional damage that plays out on our screens on Monday night.
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